I’m now typing black letters on a white screen, but the truth is never so clear as simple black and white. Any narrative can be stolen, just like my panties. Let me try to explain….

When the now infamous Rolling Stone account of a gang rape of a coed named “Jackie” at the prestigious University of Virginia, it was shocking enough for any reader, but for me….

It was especially shocking, because I could identify, as if my own very personal past was suddenly being rewritten by an omniscient, third-person narrator. Long-buried memories, formerly fixed, seemed suddenly subject to radical revision.

I could have been Jackie.

And now it appears we both have been liars.

That Rolling Stone editors, and others, subsequently called into question Jackie’s own first-person narrative does not diminish the truth-telling the story forced on me.

Such is the power of the written word, especially when imbued with a reporter’s implicit goal of objectivity — trumping the subjective point of view of a first-person (often unreliable) narrator — that I began questioning my memory as if I’d become my own prosecuting attorney or investigative reporter.

So in reading Jackie’s story, I allowed myself to think the unthinkable: Was I also raped? And have I been lying all these years, both to myself and others? Have my friends been my enablers?

The story — a lie? — which I had always told myself was in the impressionistic first-person present, as it was happening, and then, as the years went by, ever more factually fixed in the first-person past. And it was simply this:

When you’ve had too much, way too much to drink, and the people all around you are drunk as well, distinctions and definitions blur. What does the word “consensual” really mean anyway, as slurred words and affectionate embraces morph into sloppy kisses and fumbling bodies? You feel yourself being touched, groped, brushed up against, maybe even actually penetrated. Is that a finger that is felt? It tickles; no, it hurts. Or maybe not?

When you wake up, you find it laughable that you can’t find your knickers, tossed somewhere on the floor of his messy room. It’s so much easier to laugh than to cry. But cry I did when I got back to my dorm room and told my roommates what had happened. Wiping away my tears, as friends do to alleviate the pain, they helped me frame the first-person narrative that made me feel better — and that, until now, had comforted me.

Everything from that night was a blur except, for some reason, my missing and now lost panties. Lost, or stolen? And never found. There was no way they could have been violently ripped off; I would have remembered that, right?

So, yes, of course, it was consensual. Well, if not exactly consensual, it’s understandable that my date inferred as much. Otherwise….

Otherwise, I’d be compelled to utter that awful, scorching, and forever scarring word. Rape. You don’t want to say it — not out loud, not even to yourself. To be a victim, that is not your self-image. And you would certainly never date a rapist, would you?

A thief, on the other hand, that’s so much understandable, even forgivable. So I focused, even fixated, on my stolen panties. Even today, all these years later, they’re as real as if I were wearing them now: black, matching my bra at the time; bikini; newly purchased from a boutique near campus.

But a reporter — trying to be objective, writing in the third person — is not afraid to use the “R” word and edit out what’s not important — in this instance, a flimsy piece of lingerie.

As my own first-person narrator, however, to cry “rape” would make the alleged rapist and his friends enemies for life. Instead of friends having fun, I’d be at war forever. Who wants that?

Thus what I told myself — and what my complicit friends confirmed — is that I shouldn’t worry about what had happened. It was all part of having a good time in college, of being well-rounded, of learning how to be a party girl, you know?

Itwould become essential to the way I saw myself, and presented that self to others — the persona I was forging. I was no longer just a bookworm or a nerd; I was now a brilliant wild woman, living on the edge, desired by desirable men, accepted as one of the boys — a Facebook-era rendition of Zelda Fitzgerald, partying the weekends away. This cultivated self-image was as central to my college identity as my signature miniskirts, baggy sweaters, Wolford tights, and knee-high boots.

“We had fun, didn’t we?” he said when we saw each other next. I smiled, winked, and put my index finger to my lips as if to say, “don’t tell anyone how deliciously naughty I can be.” I quietly asked, and we snickered about, my panties.

They my brand-new, lace bikini panties — would become the leitmotif controlling my narrative. More than that, their thief became almost an obsession, my very own fetish that I would toy with, playing over and over again in my mind. Although his room was a mess, I’m certain my underwear was never “lost,” as he claimed. Surely, they would have turned up sometime, and he would have then used their sudden discovery as a convenient excuse to date me again?

Instead, I could picture — ever more vividly with each rewind — his balling up the panties in his fist and stuffing them somewhere never to be found during my fumbling, frantic search while hurriedly getting dressed to escape his room. But why did he want me never to find them? I could only imagine. A trophy, a souvenir, a memento? To boast, as in show-and-tell, to others? Or to secret away for masturbatory fantasies? Did he ever wash them? Did he ever wear them himself, imagining he had become me, as if a predator eating its prey?

Every possible — even the weirdest, least likely — scenario about my purloined panties played out in my mind. Anything to keep me from acknowledging the real theft, what I had suffered indeed. It would take a third person — a Rolling Stone reporter — to finally tell the truth of what had happened to me. First-person storytellers — including Jackie apparently, and especially me — seldom can be trusted.

—

Note: An earlier version of this, my very personal, essay was just published in the new London literary magazine “Talking Soup.”

For my upcoming birthday, some colleagues gave me a gift certificate for Claudio Tollardo’s renown En Vogue Salon. With branches in Moscow and Dubai as well as Zurich, it’s the reputed home to some of the most gifted hair stylists on this side of the Atlantic. Their way with hair, it is said, rivals Vladimir Nabokov’s way with words.

So when a totally unexpected, finishing flourish to my Balayage Ombre was suggested, what could I say but “Why not?” The tempting fact that I’d never before had a Pink Dip made it irresistible….

But those are the expectations not just for me but for every other girl I know. If not perpetually performing — constantly “on!” — we cease to exist. At least, that’s what it feels like.

The standard joke about bloggers is that we get to sit around all day lounging about in yoga pants and ratty sports bra, never leaving the house, in a constant state of bed head and mascara-free eyes, afraid to look in the mirror, disinclined to even “like” ourselves.

For me, it’s just the opposite. Words are like hair and makeup and the most fashionable clothes. When feeling unfun, I seldom write. And if I don’t write, I’m forgotten. The “comments” and “views” and “reads” dwindle to nothing.

So quickly forgotten, did I ever exist?

But to imagine that, when I do write, my words will somehow become timeless, immortal even, is the equivalent of believing that skinny jeans will never go out of fashion (if they haven’t already).

Here in Megève– French Alps haunt of Russian oligarchs and émigrés — the talk is all of Boris Nemtsov, the murdered Putin-opposition leader. It’s a scary time, all agree, back in Russia, not to mention the Ukraine. And don’t forget ISIS and the Mideast. Whither the world, I want to go elsewhere.

To escape the talk and the fear, you should go cross-country skiing, I tell myself. Alone, all alone, it’s better that way. I won’t have to worry about anybody else, much less the worrisome world. It’s only about me, not only my mind but also what’s best for my body.

Especially for an unpracticed body like mine, most at home in pencil skirts and heels, X-country seems so much safer than downhill, yet more intensely calorie-burning than walking, or even jogging.

It’s also so, so, so sensual. Let me try to describe what I mean:

First, I never wear gloves, only mittens. That way my fingers stay warm cuddling one another.

As for my toes and feet, they’re not stiffly imprisoned as they would be with downhill bindings. Rather, the special X-country shoes are more like a sexy corset. First, you lace them; then over the tied laces, there’s a zipper that you pull ever so gently from the toes to the ankle. Finally, where the talus meets the tibia and fibula, a stiff strap is snapped. It’s as if the designer of these shoes – Madshus of Norway — has a foot fetish.

Once you hook your shoes to the skis – long and skinny (just like my favorite jeans) – and the skis then slip and slide across the snow, you become one with the terrain. Gliding, you never leave the earth, as you would when walking, one foot lifting after the other into the insubstantial air.

Should there be any doubt about your oneness with the natural landscape, the ski poles, attached to your mitten-clad palms, ground you like lightning rods.

Alone in the snow-draped woods, all is silent except labored breathing as your heart rate quickens.

Thirty minutes into your pilgrimage, you face a choice: turn back and return on the trail you’ve already traveled, or keep going in the expectation that the trail is a loop. You keep going, for nature is not linear.

Leaving the forest behind, in the open meadows, you feel the stiff wind for the first time. The chill cuts through your loosely fitted, “soft-shell” ski pants so sharply that your skin suddenly becomes aware of the merino wool tights that you’ve base-layered underneath. The sensation is so odd, for normally you seldom feel or otherwise notice hose or tights (they so quickly become your body’s second skin).

But now it’s as if that second skin strangely belongs to the skin of another, the seductive yet cold, harsh hands of which massage and fondle your baby-soft inner thighs.

Full-circle, home again, a 60-minute woman, you look and feel gloriously spent, indeed ravished. All eyes turn toward you as you enter the chalet; the end-of-the-world chatter is momentarily hushed, so your friends can turn to regard your telltale flushed checks and sleepy eyes as if from a clandestine tryst. Yes, you must confess, the winter woods and snowy fields have been your secret lover…and, oh, what a lover they’ve been!

What’s your dream job? Mine is to be a fashion writer! Imagine getting paid to go to all the haute couture shows, rub shoulders with all the celebs, and then park your laptop at some trendy cafe to bang out words like:

“American fashion, like American politics, may be a discipline won by moving toward the middle, but the most riveting action often takes place on the sides. It is the extremists on the edges who make the clothes that are the most fun to see, and provocative to consider.” Such were the words that appeared in today’s New York Times inspired by New York Fashion Week.

The theme of the story was that, for all the designers, black seemed to be the new black. Even Vera Wang, known for her all-white wedding frocks, “went dark…mixing oversize men’s wear pieces (drawstring trousers, jackets with the shoulders sliced out) with crisp white shirting, cinching taffeta gowns with trench-coat belts, and sprinkling cobweb dresses with leather blooms.”

What magic: the words that are woven!

On the subject of black, I have a confession: Probably 3/4’s of everything in my more than ample closet is black. Call me conservative, call me boring, but it’s the fail-safe non-color I migrate to whenever I’m shopping.

And the rest of my wardrobe is simply in classic shades that work well with black: peach, blush, burgundy, camel, olive, yellow…. They’re not as understated as they sound, for if I wore anything brighter, it might call too much attention to the form-fitting skinnies and pencil skirts that I adore.

If I do don something bright, like the red in this photo, it’s as a highlight — little different from a luscious lipstick.

Jake is everything you would want in a lover: attentive, witty, romantic, persistent but not pushy. Then, just before Valentine’s Day, he disappears.

Best cure for heartache: Skiing!

So is this just the same old love story with an unhappy ending? Maybe. But it also seems like some kind of new romance, born in this early 21st-Century time of Twitter and Tweets. Two strangers on opposite sides of the world, we had met, prompted by a mysterious algorithm, and followed each other on Twitter, then started direct-messaging. Linked here — from my Medium Publication The Way We Love Now — is the unedited transcript.

That is the question posed this morning by my blogging instructor. It’s a sign of a good question when I don’t know the answer, which is the case now.

I guess I had just assumed that my ideal or dream readers would be people like myself who want to live life as fully as possible — and then reflect upon those experiences, making them even fuller.

Drink deep of the Pierian spring!

But the sad fact is: I don’t have that many regular Blog readers — so-called “followers” — at least in comparison to my following on Medium and Facebook (almost 10,000!)

I’m therefore forced to confront the possibility that the tools I use to attract Blog readers — the same titillating tools that every woman who understands makeup and fashion has in her own toolbox — are attracting the “wrong kind of” readers.

That is, my blogging creates too many “one-night stands” — and too few long-term relationships! I guess I need to understand that blogging is not flirting!

Orgasmic! That’s how I feel — absolutely, positively (dare I say “joyfully?) orgasmic! And that’s not just a figure of speech. Literally, I feel like I could climax at any moment, even though I’m sitting alone with my laptop at a very crowded café on the banks of the Limmat in downtown Zurich.

I can feel my cheeks blush. Underneath my layered look of oversized jacket, unbuttoned blouse, and camisole, I can sense my nipples stiffening against the fabric of my demi bra. My skinny jeans are tight against my crotch, and I feel the irresistible urge to pull them tighter, ever tighter.

Actually, it’s hard — extremely hard — to restrain my hands from reaching down beneath the table to touch myself between my spreading thighs as they hunger for something to wrap around and hump.

Can people notice? Is anybody watching? My eyes dance furtively around the room.

Let them watch, as I dare myself to leap up on top of the table, swirl my hands through my tossed-back hair, and scream ecstatically: